For decades, Elliott Sharp has been filed away in my mind as a downtown New York improv guitar guy. With the release of the present CD, The Boreal, however, I was surprised to learn that he has also been working as a composer of avant-garde classical for quite some time–a field in which he has collected numerous accolades. Who knew? Comprised of four works spanning the years 2004-2009, the CD’s program gets underway with the title piece, in which the strings of the JACK Quartet’s violins are scraped with rewound bows, spring bows and bows fitted with strings of metal balls. The overall effect ranges from sparse scraping sounds reverberating inside a giant cheese grater, proceeding on into a wide array of very insistent sawing motions. “JACK is a fearless ensemble and took to the alternate bows with great enthusiasm, tearing into their valuable instruments with abandon to yield the beautifully vicious sounds that I envisioned.”–Elliott Sharp